James Bond goes solo...

Speaking at the launch of the new book, Solo, author William Boyd said “I’ve taken Bond back to basics. Instead of shagging a bevy of beautiful girls with appealingly silly names, Bond gets a perfunctory hand-job from Rosa Klebb, the hatchet-faced Russian agent he first encountered in From Russia with Love. It’s this painful episode that persuades Bond to go solo in future: a discreet hand shandy, “shaken, not stirred”.

“No Bond novel is complete without a convincingly evil villain, of course, so I went back to Ian Fleming’s original books, and combined the names and characteristics of two of his most memorable baddies, Blofeld and OddJob. I confidently expect Oddfeld to join the pantheon of classic Bond villains”...